Motorola Blaze for Verizon: the touch screen war hasn’t stopped yet

Ooooh! It’s purdy and shiny. Yes, yes, y’all — another Motorola scoop. This time, we’re switching gears from non-autofocusness to touch screens. There’s also very little doubt the Motorola Blaze isn’t coming to Big Red. Seeing as how, you know, it’s plastered all over the thing! Big Red being Verizon for all you slow pokes.

The handset takes design cues from a number of Motorola products. It’s odly a MING crossed with a PEBL crossed with a RAZR 2. Yeah. There’s a custom OS just for Verizon (did you really think they were done junking up their devices with that red theme?) and it works decently. It’s by no means a smartphone here. The mobile web browser is ok, and that’s being super nice. Texting or writing emails with the touch screen keyboard a la LG Voyager is bland, hard to use, and frustrating. Additionally, the phone has Haptic feedback but you have to press the darn touch screen so hard you feel like you’re going to break it. Specs we found? 2 megapixel camera, EV-DO Rev. A support, GPS, Bluetooth, MobileTV, and the regular standard feature set. Best part of the phone so far? While limited, you can use the device with the flip closed. Actually kind of cool. In a really not cool sort of way. Lastly, there’s no clue as to whether the much rumored visual voicemail is in here, but we’d guess that’s not going to make it in until the last second. Want some bad ass shots of said device? Jump!